KCLL Klues: Washington State Legal Research

On June 18, 2010, Ronnie Lee Gardner is scheduled for execution in Utah by firing squad. Regardless of one’s stance on the death penalty, the idea of execution by firing squad (or hanging) seems rather archaic. However, it is interesting to get a sense of how the death penalty is applied across the US.

For as long as there have been organized societies, capital punishment has been used to punish crimes, real or imagined, and to suppress political opposition. In 1972, the US Supreme Court determined in the collective cases known as Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), that Georgia’s capital punishment statutes were arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishment” clause because juries were given no guidance to determine whether a defendant deserved execution. In the aftermath of Furman, the Court voided forty state’s death penalty statutes.

Many states immediately began rewriting their death penalty statutes to remove the “arbitrariness” by giving judges and juries guidelines for determining whether a case warranted the death penalty, and also introduced aggravating and mitigating factors. These new statutes were approved by the Supreme Court in 1976 in the Gregg decision, 428 U.S. 153 (1976). The Court thus determined that the death penalty, as drafted under Gregg, did not violate the Eighth Amendment and reinstated the death penalty.

Since the Gregg decision, there have been 1,215 executions throughout the US. Fifteen states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico do not have, or have rescinded their death penalty statutes. And two states, Kansas and New Hampshire, while not abolishing the death penalty, have not had any executions since 1972. This means that executions in the US are carried out in thirty-three states.

The means of execution are as follows, listed in order by frequency of use: lethal injection, electrocution, lethal gas, hanging, and firing squad. Oklahoma and Utah provide for execution by firing squad as one means of execution while Delaware, New Hampshire, and Washington execution statutes provide for hanging as one means of execution. Washington’s second method of execution is lethal injection.

Although executions occurred here years before Washington became a state, the death penalty was enacted in 1904, abolished in 1913 and reinstated in 1919. It was abolished again under Furman in 1972.

In 1975, an initiative favoring the death penalty was passed by Washington voters. However, the state legislature enacted its capital punishment statutes in compliance with the constitutional guidelines approved by the Gregg decision in 1977. The current version of the death penalty statute was enacted in 1981, but has not been revised since 1998. Washington has executed a total of 109 in all, but only 4 people since reinstating its death penalty statute. And, in the time since the death penalty has been reinstated, one person has been exonerated.

Click the following links to obtain more information for or against the death penalty.

To read more about Mr. Gardner’s upcoming execution, click here or here or here.

To read more about the death penalty in Washington, click here or here or here.

To learn more about exoneration in Washington, click here.

Stay tuned for our upcoming podcast–an interview with former defense counsel Dan Riviera for convicted murderer Joseph Self.

Since April 20, 2010, oil from a BP deep water rig has been gushing into the gulf waters off the coast of Louisiana. As it creeps toward Florida, it still may be difficult to understand how big this oil slick really is.

Resource Shelf–a newsletter designed for educators, journalist and information professionals–has provided a link to ifitwasmyhome.com to help visualize the areas affected by this disaster. To give a better perspective of this environmental hazard, this web tool allows you to see the size of the slick in the Gulf of Mexico, or as centered over a location of your choosing.

Click here to see the oil slick superimposed over a map of your current location. Once the page has loaded, you can change the map to a different location.

Click here to see other links provided by that Resource Shelf to get updates on the Spill.

Maytag has announced its recall of nearly 1.7 million dishwashers due to fire hazard. The company has received 12 reports of electrical failure in the dishwasher heating element — including one kitchen fire. The recalled dishwashers are from the Maytag, Amana, Jenn-Air, Admiral, Magic Chef, Performa by Maytag and Crosley brands. Each of these affected dishwashers have front panels in black, bisque, white, silver and stainless steel and platic tubs. They were sold in US department and appliance stores from February 2006 through April 2010.

If you own one of these Maytag dishwashers, you should stop using it immediately and disconnect it from its power source. You should then check the Maytag website to determine if your dishwasher is included in this recall. Maytag plans to give consumers the option of a free in-home repair or a rebate of $150 or $250 toward the purchase a new Maytag dishwasher.

To find out more about this recall you can read the report on the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s website or the Maytag repair website.

To read news articles on th Maytag recall, click here or here.

This past March, the Washington State House and Senate passed into law SB6239, which makes technical changes to gender-based terms contained in the Revised Code of Washington (RCW)—that is, changing “he” to “he or she” and “his” to “his or hers”. This bill was signed by Governor Gregoire on March 10, 2010.

The affected statutes can be found here. These changes will go into effect on June 10, 2010.

And now we offer a moment of silence for the cancellation of “Law and Order”….

NBC has decided not to renew the original ”Law and Order” series after twenty years on the air.  The last show of the season will be broadcast on May 24, 2010, at which time it will be tied with “Gunsmoke” as the longest running television show.  After May 24th, you can still watch the original series in syndication, proving that goodbye isn’t really forever.

To learn more about the three US “Law and Order” franchises, click here: “Law and Order“, “Law and Order: SVU” and “Law and Order: Criminal Intent.”

 To read news articles on the cancellation of “Law and Order”, click here and here.

On May 13, 2010, President Obama submitted the New START Treaty Package to the Senate. The treaty will need a two-thirds vote in the Senate before it can be ratified and take the effect of law in the US.

To read the White House Press Release on this treaty, click here.

To read more about the treaty ratification process in the US, click here.

To read the previous blog post on New START, click here.

Today in the Czech Republic, Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev of Russia signed the Nuclear Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (called New Start). This treaty is aimed at reducing the number of nuclear arms held by both countries. Together the US and Russia own 90% of the nuclear arms in existence.

The objective of this treaty is that each country will decrease nuclear warheads by 30% while decreasing by half the instrumentalities used to carry them. The additional goals are to improve relations between the US and Russia and put increased pressure on Iran as it attempts to develop its own nuclear weapons.

The US Senate and Russian Duma still will need to ratify this treaty before it can take effect.

To read news coverage on this treaty, click here or here.

To read the text of the treaty, click here.

To read a comparison between this treaty and previous nuclear reduction treaties between the US and Russia, click here.

Today the US Court of Appeals in Washington DC ruled against the FCC in its fight to maintain net neutrality. “Net neutrality” is the concept that there should be no restrictions on information available on the internet—or, in other words, there should be no preferential treatment for any information on the internet. The court’s Ruling in Comcast v. FCC strikes at the heart of this concept.

As you likely know, the FCC is an independent federal agency, with jurisdiction across all of the US and its territories, “charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable.” In 2007 the FCC discovered that Comcast was deliberately slowing down or blocking its subscribers’ high-speed internet connections when they attempted to access media through online file exchange services such as BitTorrent. The FCC ruled that Comcast’s business practice “contravenes federal policies that protect the vibrant and open nature of the Internet” and gave the company until the end of 2008 to correct the problem. Comcast, claiming that its practices were intended to help manage limited network capacity, appealed the FCC decision to the DC Court of Appeals.

In today’s decision, the DC Court of Appeals indicated that the FCC has no “statutorily mandated” authority over Comcast’s internet service management, reversing the FCC’s order against Comcast. While this decision is a victory for Comcast and other internet service providers, the real losers here might be the public who face the possibility of continued limitation or blocking of access to certain online platforms as well as increased costs for more bandwidth access.

To read the New York Times Article on this ruling, click here.

To read the text of the DC Court of Appeals decision, click here.

To learn more about net neutrality, click here.

With Toyota making a daily appearance in the news, you may be wondering whether your vehicle—Toyota or not—is actually safe to drive. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is the government offshoot of the Department of Transportation set up to address vehicle safety issues. Their mission is to “Save lives, prevent injuries, reduce vehicle-related crashes.”

The NHTSA site helps users determine whether a vehicle has any outstanding recalls, gives users information on how to file a complaint about an allegedly defective vehicle, and give the latest research to help determine which car or child seat is safest. When accessing the site, one can research under the following tabs: “Traffic Safety”; “Vehicles and Equipment”; “Laws/Regulations/Guidance”; “NCSA (National Center for Safety Analysis)”; and, “Vehicle Safety Research”.

To find out more information about the Toyota recall, look here.

A frightening bit from Sherwood Forest:

News reports indicate that 45-year-old Colin Gunn was permitted by prison wardens to set up a Facebook account from which he had been threatening persons whom he intends to target upon his release. It seems that this gang boss from Nottingham, England, is serving a 35-year sentence in a maximum security prison for conspiracy to commit murder. His account had been open for two months and, in that time, he amassed 565 “friends”, threatened individuals for “disappointing” him, and continued to run his organization. His account was shut down on Friday, January 29, right before the Times published their article exposing his activity.

Unfortunately, this is a trend in social networking. Twitter, MySpace, and YouTube also are being used as cybercenters for criminal activity. “Cyberbanging”, as some call it, is now a means of recruiting, threatening and bragging about criminal exploits. However, MySpace  is the site of choice since it has been around longer and is easier to search.

Seems Mr. Gunn is not the first to come up with this idea. And he likely won’t be the last.

Want more info on cyberbanging? Click here or here.